The Chronicles of Being Unpopular in College

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Month: September 2014

I think today the blog is actually going to be about 90% positive. I will say that things this year seem to be running smoother. Perhaps it’s because I’m exposed way less to the people that make me uncomfortable, or perhaps it’s because I’m becoming self actualized.

Yeah it’s probably the first one.

Anyway, I started my new job yesterday. It was basically just a meeting followed by some research, but today we really jumped into it. I can’t give too many details, both because I don’t want to give away what I do, thus giving more clues as to who this Anonymous Student is; But also because I signed stuff saying I’m not supposed to talk about it in detail. So I’ll just give you a rough overview as it pertains to me.

The experience is amazing. Today I jumped from 0-60 when it comes to my involvement, and not only did it work out great, but I learned a lot. I’ve felt a little overwhelmed when it comes to my classes, and I really think this job will be more than just good for the resume, but good for my breadth of knowledge. I think I’m just as excited about that as I am about job experience.

I did have a little bit of awkwardness with one of my professors today. I have a professor that tends to butt heads with me on how I do projects. He is very supportive of course, but creatively we think very differently. I thought that was as far as it went, but I spent some time after working today discussing that and other projects with him and another professor, and the whole time I felt like he wanted me to go away.

Once again I can’t stress enough that I get paranoid. I did sort of happen upon them together and perhaps he had business with the other professor to discuss and felt I interrupted. I just know that I felt uncomfortable about it and I don’t want to seem pushy.

To be completely honest, what I really want to say is that I don’t want to get on the bad side of a professor who already tends to disagree with me creatively. However the reason why I was avoiding saying that is because I know he is a professional and even if he couldn’t stand me, that wouldn’t interrupt how he taught me or graded me. So in the end I’m sharing a story of paranoia for pretty much no reason.

Except of course to get it off my chest.

Okay so ‘negativity’ took over the blog a bit, but 90% of my day felt positive, it just took longer to explain the second part.

Thanks for bearing with me. Thanks to everyone who is following my blog. I expected no one to be interested so it’s the best surprise there is and I appreciate it.

It’s official, I have a job! Not just any job either, a job at the school and a job in my field of study at the school.

Of course like every other new job or new thing I’m both excited and nervous. I shall itemize:

Positives:
1. It’s work in my field that provides both experience and an opportunity to bulk up my resume.

2. Money! Really I can’t stress that enough. Money!!!

3. This will give me an opportunity to work with one of the ‘cool kids’. It’s not really about trying to get ‘in’ with them, as that’s not really my goal. At least I don’t think. I do however see it as a worthy challenge. I’ve always been awkward with people I think don’t like me, so I can try to overcome that.

Negative:
1. This will force me to work with one of the ‘cool kids’. I don’t excel at social challenges. At least not anymore. I’ve always been awkward with people I think don’t like me, and I don’t know if I can overcome that.

2. It may be a lot of the same type of work a lot, and I have some fear of getting overwhelmed by everything. A McDonald’s job would require less thought is what I’m getting at.

3. Money. I can’t stress this enough. While it is some money, there aren’t a lot of hours and there is a cap on how much money I can make…and I kinda wish it was more.

Obviously because I both applied for and am taking the job I have decided that the positives outweigh the negatives. I think the hardest thing for me is challenging myself. I may be able to rise to challenges I’m ‘forced’ to do in any given situation, but I’m not a big self motivator. I’m working on this, and I think this job is a great first step to that.

Today we had fake job interviews at school to prepare us for the ‘real world’. Being a 20-something I have had my fair share of job interviews before so I wasn’t really concerned. Well concerned about the questions that is, I was however concerned about my look.

We were instructed to dress professionally as though this were a real job interview. This makes perfect sense, however I wasn’t anticipating applying for a job more serious than McDonald’s when I came back here, so I didn’t pack any of my serious attire. Okay so I didn’t buy any serious attire, let’s face it, I have nothing serious.

I’m a comfortable dresser. Not necessarily always casual, I have a few ‘nicer’ things, but it always has to be comfortable. With that being said I had nothing that could be considered ‘professional’ and ‘comfortable’. So I went out, spent way to much money on a pant suit, with a couple of tops to go with it, and fairly comfortable low high heals, and quickly discovered that I was more overdressed than any of my classmates.

They were all nicely dressed, but I mainly got the new clothes in order to avoid jeans, and only a few other people actually avoided jeans. I was a little concerned that the teachers would find me a little bit silly, but not only did the interview go well, but I was complimented on my outfit specifically which made me pretty happy.

In the land of friends here, I spent most of my day with a friend from last year in my program, and it was all very nice. I should name her…we’ll call her Kindheart, because that pretty much describes her. She however isn’t the friend who deemed me ‘best friend’ within a month of knowing her (this isn’t a bad thing, I only mention it because my other good friend here did). The one who deemed me best friend will likely be out of school for a little bit because she is going through some pretty heavy stuff right now. We’ll name her Preggers for now (not because she doesn’t deserve a nice name, because she definitely does, but because it’s a big part of her life right now and I think the word preggers is funny).

I break from regularly scheduled programming to air a selfish worry. Preggers is obviously preggers, she is young and dealing with a lot in regards to this (which I will not detail here just in case, as it’s not my business to share). My personal concern, is that we are supposed to be working together a lot on projects this year. She is my partner in one project, and the third leg of a tripod in another. She has already missed some classes due to morning sickness, which turned out to be an aversion to the prenatal vitamins, and now she is missing more as a lot is going on at home that I won’t detail.

I cannot stress enough that in my personal life, I feel nothing but sympathy and empathy for her. What she is going through is incredibly difficult, and largely unfair. However in my school life, which to be fair is a big part of my life, I just want to know what is going to happen. She is already unsure of funding for school, so she isn’t even enrolled in classes officially yet, and with everything going on because of the baby, it’s even more up in the air.

Like I said, this is the selfish portion of today’s blog, but I just wish she knew what was happening so I could plan what I have to do. I’d like to get working on some of these projects, but right now she is a) unavailable for a little bit, and b) unsure if she can continue. If she can’t, I don’t want to have started things with her, just to have to scramble for someone else to work with, or have to work on my own.

The sympathetic friend part of me hates the studious student part of me right now.

Finally I should update about what this blog is actually about. My interactions with everyone have been fairly pleasant of late. I’m not sure if it’s some new found confidence, or maybe I’m chilling out due to the blog, but I haven’t felt an overwhelming feeling of unimportance which is nice. Not to say I’ve felt important by any means, in fact I occasionally feel unwarranted jealousy, but not feeling invisible is nice. This is outside of my general paranoia of course. It also looks like I will be spending a lot of time working with one of the ‘cool kids’ as my new official job at the school. Hopefully this will be a positive endeavor.

Today The other day when I started this…nothing of import happened in relation to my staggering unpopularity. There was this weird moment in the cafeteria when I was finished buying my food and I saw a couple ‘cool kids’ getting up to leave and I thought for a split second that they noticed me and looked maybe like they would try to avoid me. However this is about as likely as it is that I’m projecting my fear of how I think they would react onto them. In fact I couldn’t have glanced at them for longer than a second before I defaulted into defense mode and walked out with my head held high acting like I didn’t care if they noticed me or not, and maybe I didn’t even notice them. And I wonder why…anyway.

What did happen today however was a grievance put forth time an again since about, maybe the 3rd grade, but once you reach college (especially if you’re already twenty something five or more…) you kind of expect not to have to deal with it anymore. Apparently you’re never really free of bull.

Anyhow, since college is a hands on experience, one could probably deduce that we occasionally do stuff on computers. Today we were in a class that is solely working on computers, and usually this is fine, but the ADHD kid sits next to me, and well he drives me crazy.

Now to be clear, I’m insensitively using this ‘diagnosis’, I am aware of this. While I wouldn’t be surprised if he has this condition, I don’t actually know, and if he was just jittery, or talked a lot (which he does do) I wouldn’t mind that much. However when you take every possible pause in the lesson to open up your video game (and I’m not talking minesweeper, I’m talking full immersive gaming) and then you need to ask me what’s happening every 3 seconds, well you end up pissing me off.

I find it incredibly frustrating to be the studious one, both because I feel I need to pay that much attention and because I want to look good to the teachers, and then get bugged every 3 seconds to find out what is happening. If he only did it when it was legitimate downtime, or even just when you’re supposed to be doing your own work, that would be okay. However what he actually does is listen to the teacher, for just long enough to open whatever thing we’re supposed to open on the computer, and he gets finished no more than 10 seconds before the other students and then starts gaming. He then tries to keep up by flitting back and forth but inevitably gets more into the game than the work. Then he needs to ask for help to catch up while I’m busy trying to execute the instructions and because I’m non-confrontational I help him out.

Now I know the non-confrontational part is technically my problem. I know I could tell him it’s not my job to teach him and to start paying attention but I have 3 issues with that:

1. Not only do I not like to alienate people (yes even those who piss me off) we also all ask each other for help all the time. Not only could I accidentally alienate other people because they think I’m just being a bitch, but there is also no way to differentiate when he honestly missed something due to working on the previous thing or just didn’t understand from him just fucking off and not paying attention.

2. I too need some help sometimes and if he understands I don’t want to burn that bridge, and again about everyone else possibly thinking I’m a bitch, I don’t want them to decide I should have just payed attention.

3. Neither of the previous two should matter. Seriously, yes I have my hangups, but the first hangup to cause my hangup was him gaming in class, so not to succumb to immaturity, but he started it!

I never planned to post every day, so I’m kinda glad I slacked off in posting this because now anyone who reads this won’t think I’ve disappeared if I miss a couple days. I probably will post tomorrow though because shit hit the fan in the life of one of the good ones here and I’ll want to rant about that.

So when you change your mind about something because of how much work it is going to be, is that weakness or knowing your strengths? Of course I don’t mean quitting on people or letting anyone down at the moment. See we have to apply for jobs for some of our projects this year in order to prepare for the real world and job interviews and committing to what the job entails, etc, etc.

Originally I applied first for the most difficult, but arguably the most rewarding job. However then we started going over what the job would entail, and I thought about two things:

1. I’m already doing this job in another project, and while I do want to hone my skills in this department, I also want a well rounded education, and don’t want to be too bogged down right from the get go.

2. If I take this job in this particular class, I’m inevitably going to have to work with a couple of the ‘cool kids’ I had to work with last year more closely, and to be frank, I’m not keen on being treated like I don’t exist again this year.

So the predicament is, I’m completely behind myself on the first reason. I did come here instead of staying closer to home in order to get a well rounded education. I am also getting the opportunity to do the same job on a different project that in fact I’m more passionate about. However my fear is that the logic of reason #1 isn’t what is driving me, but in fact it’s the fear and apprehension residing in reason #2.

The truth is I wanted to work on being more assertive this year. Not just trying to talk and hoping people will listen, but always voicing my thoughts and making people listen, especially those who are supposed to be working with me and collaborating with me, not just with each other because they talk about it when they’re hanging out at home and have it all figured out before the official meting that I’m actually a part of so I never get any of my thoughts heard and —–

Sorry i got a little carried away there. Suffice it to say that the week off I took last year happened after one of the many meetings where I felt ignored doing a similar job to the one that I’ve now backed out of trying for.

In the meantime, all of my random thoughts on this don’t matter all that much because I already switched my job preferences for the professor and to do it again would make me look….not very good. So I’m stuck with my second decision whether I like it or not. I do think it makes me a little weak, but I also think it will make me a little happier, and that’s nothing to scoff at.

Let’s start off with the good stuff, because it’s always more fun to end a blog post on a bad note right? Right.

So today I noticed some improvement in my interpersonal relations here in Anonymous City, Anonymous. Last year, I had a classmate that I thought was a pretty good friend in the beginning but slowly moved towards the ‘cool kids’ and little by little spoke to me less. We shall call her ‘Fade Away’. Anyway, I was really hurt when Fade Away faded away, because I actually really enjoyed talking with her and I could never figure out why she decided to quietly shun me all of a sudden.

I say quietly because that is how it was, she just stopped responding as much when I talked to her, leaving shortly after I arrived somewhere and showing little interest in joining me anywhere. Though today she actually engaged in pleasant conversation with me on more than one occasion. She joked with me in class, had a full talk while out for a cigarette and rarely did I feel like she wished she was elsewhere. This boosted my spirits.

Of course the good people in my life here were still good, they shall be named shortly enough, but apart from being awesome, there isn’t really a story there, so moving on.

On my way back to my dorm I was looking forward to a nice quiet night in, I wasn’t really bothered by it as I had a fairly long but mostly pleasant day at school, so I harbored no expectations for the evening. However when passing a group of people on the way to the dorm, I discovered that I knew one of them vaguely through a friend from last year so I lit up a cigarette and decided to say hello. It turned out this group of people were going off campus, but not far off campus, for dinner and she invited me. Usually for fear of being awkward I would say no. In fact I almost did, and when I agreed and realized that it would be 3 people I didn’t know and her, whom I barely know, I considered changing my answer. In fact the biggest reason I didn’t change my answer was because I thought it would be embarrassing because I couldn’t come up with a good excuse fast enough.

In any event we left to head the short 7-10 minute walk to the restaurant. Now I have to make a confession:

I’m fat. I don’t mean chubby, I mean fat. You all get why no one likes me now huh? No, that’s not it, at least I hope not… Anyway, the point of this confession is that I walk slower than most thin people, and I get winded easier. This girl who invited me, let’s call her ‘Sweetie’ for now, because she really is sweet, walked with me at my pace the whole time. Sweetie drew no attention to my mildly labored breaths, and made me feel welcome the whole time. This isn’t to say that there were no awkward ‘what am I doing here?’ moments, but in general it was a pleasant, outside the norm evening. I even got to have a shop-talk discussion with a guy in a similar program to mine.

I’m not sure if I made life-long friends, but I had a nice evening and that’s not nothing.

Now the bad news. I’m sure I will being getting more into this as the year wears on, but I fear my unpopularity is going to kick me in the ass when it comes to my internship. Yes we all apply for internships, I will tell you that much.

Anyway, last year, I did my damnedest, I really did and most, certainly not all, but most of my grades reflected that. However when someone wants to hire you to work at their company, this matters less than how you are with people and how likely you were to show up for class, and how you meet deadlines, etc. I can’t stress enough that when group work was involved, I showed up. However, the teachers don’t care if you showed up when others counted on you, they care that you did all the time.

That was difficult to accomplish with how depressed I got last year due to incredible loneliness. In fact I took a week off last year, citing some illness or another, but really I was too depressed to leave my house. I took a mental health week. Not day, not long weekend, but week. Of course they did believe I was sick, but I don’t want them saying anything about me not being trustworthy. That would be horrendous. However I have a plan:

Improve immediately. Show up, always, assert myself rather than trying to please the ‘cool kids’, and work work work. Hopefully they will see this and forget my indiscretions from last year.

I guess that ended on a sort of positive note. Sorry if that was wildly uninteresting for those that are following me (and to you few, thank you so much, I never figured this would actually reach anyone, and so soon!), here’s hoping my life is shittier tomorrow!

Without getting into too much detail, it will be important for this and future posts to tell you that I’m not in a general education program, but in fact in a more regimented, you’re with the same people all the time program. I tell you this so a) I don’t get people saying, “Just make friends in one of your other classes”, or some other such sayings. I have no other classes, and not enough time to start ‘joining’ things. Also b) because we are in a regimented program, we have groups on the internet that involve all of us, so if someone posts something we all see it, it’s one doodle that can’t be undid.

I tell you this because of the phantom party incident. One of the ‘cooler’ classmates posted that they were going to have a party this most recent Friday (2 days ago), and I was actually going to go. I figured I spend all my time assuming they don’t like me, but I never go out of my way to spend time with them, therefore never finding out how horribly wrong I am, or at least proving to them how horribly wrong they are. In any case, the party was simply mentioned, it wasn’t an event posting with a time and an address, so all I could do to show my enthusiasm was ‘like’ the post.

So after that, when the day got closer I figured I would ask at school where it was and I could go, but then Friday morning the first weird thing happened. We were in class, one that all of us are in, and one of the ‘cool’ ones that is nice to me was sitting next to me talking to the party host. I didn’t hear what they were saying except the nice one was saying ‘I’m so psyched’. He then looked at me and said ‘Anonymous, I’m so psyched.’ I asked him what about, and the weird thing was the pause. He didn’t say right away, he paused, thought about what he was saying, and told me, ‘oh just about class’.

I’m paraphrasing of course, but I was sure he was psyched about something other than class. To be fair, I’m pretty sure he was high, so the thinking could have been because of his state of mind, but I got a weird feeling it was about the party, but he didn’t want to say it to me. Needless to say this made me nervous enough about actually being welcome, that I didn’t ask about the party.

However later I was outside having a lovely conversation with one of my classmates that has always been kind to me, when another came by. I casually asked about the party then, and other classmate, lets call him…last years mistake (I may explain that one day) told me he thought it was cancelled. He didn’t hesitate, so I figured he was telling the truth. We engaged in a little more conversation but that was end of party talk. It even appeased my fears from earlier. However much later another strange thing happened, which has made me paranoid yet again.

At about 11pm – 1am (I wasn’t really looking at the clock) I was out for a cigarette at my residence. I’m not sure if I mentioned, I’m old and living in residence. Also I smoke a little, which I know I know I know I need to stop. Anyway, one of the other students in my program in residence came outside and was on his phone, walking towards the parking lot. I decided to go over and say a quick hello, and boy did he seem weirded out by this. I wouldn’t expect him to be weirded out, we usually are fairly comfortable with each other, but this time not so much. I decided to ask him about the Phantom Party and he said it was cancelled too, but I heard a girl on the phone and while it could have been anyone, it also kinda sounded like a girl in our program. He said he was off to hang out with someone who wasn’t in our program, however I’m not sure if it’s true. It could be of course, it could be a friend or a hookup that he didn’t want me to know about, but the paranoid insecure girly girl in me feared that whether it was the Phantom Party or random hangouts, it could be people I know, who wish they didn’t know me.

I understand that I could be crazy with all of my random fears, but I also could be totally sane. I don’t know what to think, all I know is that I feel like more than half of my classmates want nothing to do with me, and since they’re all I have up here, it doesn’t exactly feel very good.

Even worse I think is that I’m as old as I am, worried that people much younger than me don’t likely. Well not all of them are younger and yeah, age doesn’t matter, blah blah blah, but I thought I was over this random insecurity thing. I hoped that I could be above it. I should in fact be above it, because not only do I have a few friends here that make me feel important and loved, but I left a whole town behind filled with friends and family who love me for me, so I shouldn’t need any new friends out here.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve always had more than 3 friends to see. Not to mention for the last 3-9 years, they’ve been able to go to the bar and have a couple drinks, and talk about things other than the ever present drama, while complaining that other people are too dramatic. I’m sure I did that when I was their age, but the thing is I’m not anymore, so while I may understand it, I’m not exactly ‘there’ and I’m pretty sure my eyes glaze over eventually.

Anyway, whether the party happened and was just invisible to me, or didn’t happen, but was definitely a real idea, I feel Phantom Party is the best title for it, and it will stay the reminder that perhaps, instead of looking for ghosts, I should just accept that they’re there, but live my life like they’re not.

Hi, my name is Anonymous Student. I go to College at an Anonymous School in an Anonymous City in an Anonymous Country (obviously English speaking).

Full disclosure: I hate my school. This is not to say that it has no redeeming qualities. I like what I’m learning and the few friends I have are lovely. However besides that I’m somewhere in the second half of my 20’s living in a dorm, the people that aren’t my friends act like the cool kids from high school, and I’m far from home so the loneliness wears on me more often than I’d like.

Solution: Apart from my ‘Daily Positivities’, which I will explain at a later date, I thought griping about crap anonymously online would feed my soul. Hopefully it will be entertaining. Whether or not that is because I’m clever or stupid remains to be seen.